Tai Chi - the perfect way to balance mind, body and spirit.

Tai Chi is an ancient Martial Art system that is practised throughout the world. It consists of a series of ‘mind body exercises’, based on several Asian traditions, including Martial Arts, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Daoist philosophy.

There are many benefits that you can expect with regular practice of Tai Chi. It helps with balance, posture, relaxation, co-ordination and self-confidence. The stretching and gentle flowing movements, performed slowly and deliberately, stimulate and massage the internal organs, as well as improving muscle flexibility and strength.

There are around 250 million people throughout the world, currently practising this art, as people have been doing for thousands of years.

Just as dance varies from tango and foxtrot to ballet and jazz, there are many diverse styles and variations of Tai Chi. Some are fast, some quite complex, some simpler. Some include weapons such as sword, stick or silk, and some are more biased towards self defence and competition. I have trained in, and teach, Lee (Li) style Tai Chi.

The ultimate purpose of Tai Chi is to cultivate the chi, or life energy, within us, to flow smoothly and powerfully through the body, keeping us healthy and energised.

Tai Chi enables us to re-establish a connection of the mind with the body. The slow movements allow our focus to follow and direct the positioning of our hands and feet. Through this connection we gain greater balance and co-ordination, and our nervous system improves as we develop the awareness of our body.

Exercises and Breath Training benefits

We tend to move quickly about our business for the most part with stooped shoulders and a contracted chest, creating shallow breathing. These poor habits have brought with them many problems causing diseases in the respiratory system.

These learned poor habits have robbed us of our natural ability to breathe correctly, and Dao Yin exercises are designed to help us to re-learn good breathing habits, allowing us to take in more oxygen.

These exercises involve movements co-ordinated with the breath. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, many of these breathing exercises are prescribed by doctors, either to help alleviate a problem, but mostly as a preventative therapy. There are literally hundreds, all with interesting names, and often aimed at particular parts of the body.

Kai Men, another type of Tai Chi exercise, translates as ‘Open Door”, and these exercises are designed to open the joints for the Chi to flow smoothly around the body. They are also sometimes referred to as Chinese yoga. In these exercises, we have an initial sequence, and then an extension. These are named after the stance we take in which to practice them.

The Tai Chi Form is a series of 140 moves, split into named sequences. It takes many years to learn! It’s the repetition that embeds the moves into your muscle memory. When you have been practising this for a long time, your body performs these moves without you having to think about it. Rather like playing the piano, or driving a car.

But it is the journey, not the destination that is important. Tai Chi is calming, and you feel the benefit of regular practice very quickly.

A Short History

Throughout Chinese history, warriors, poets, healers, sages, farmers, engineers, men, women, the old and the young have practised Tai Chi, going back many centuries. Its foundation can easily be seen to have evolved from Martial Arts, as so many of the moves we perform relate to self defence.

There are several versions of its history, all deeply entrenched in Chinese culture.

The first known written reference of martial arts appeared in the ‘Book of Changes’ over 3,000 years ago.

An important landmark in the history of T’ai Chi is the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province, considered to be the cradle of the Chinese martial arts. Legend has it that sometime around the sixth century, the Bodhidarma arrived to find the monks at the Shaolin Temple in extremely poor health and fitness. He taught them exercises to strengthen their minds and bodies for meditation. These exercises evolved into the beginnings of Kung Fu.

Thought to have lived in the 13th century, Chang San-feng had been a Shaolin monk who practised Kung Fu, when he decided to live in the Wudang mountains as a Taoist hermit. It is said he spent 9 years meditating, formulating a new art based on softness and yielding. This followed him watching a fight between a snake and a crane.

From this, Chang developed a Martial Art based on natural principles, that used softness and internal power to overcome brute force. This was the beginning of Tai Chi as we now know it. These skills were taken from village to village by the monks, passing on their knowledge.

Since then, Tai Chi has been passed down through families; each generation teaching the next. The many styles of Tai Chi are named after the family that has developed and nurtured each style, such as the Lee (or Li) Style Tai Chi that I teach.

Chee Soo (1919 - 1994) was trained by the last remaining member of the Lee family to continue the Arts, Chan Lee. He had moved to London, and trained Chee Soo in all its aspects. Chee Soo set up his first class in East London in the early 1950’s, and continued to teach the Chinese Arts he had been taught by Chan Lee up and down the country, including in Leeds and Hull. I am told that in Leeds his classes would regularly have as many as 100 students attending.

I began my studies with students of his students, but have continued my training directly with 2 of Chee Soo’s students, who are in their 70’s and 80’s. And so Tai Chi is passed on to you, directly from the knowledge from thousands of years ago. I hope you enjoy it!

These notes are for your interest only and are not to be reproduced. They are my understanding from many lessons, conversations, books and articles.